Request For Separate Juries Dropped In Petit Slaying Trial

Dr. William Petit leaves court July 27th, 2010. The court heard from Steven Hayes' defense, which argued the death penalty should not apply in the Cheshire Home Invasion case.

Dr. William Petit leaves court July 27th, 2010. The court heard from Steven Hayes' defense, which argued the death penalty should not apply in the Cheshire Home Invasion case. (Michael Townsend / Fox CT)

Jennifer Hawke-Petit, who was killed in her home in Cheshire on July 23, 2007, along with her two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. Her husband, Dr. William Petit Jr., survived the attack despite being bound and severely beaten in the home invasion.

Jennifer Hawke-Petit, who was killed in her home in Cheshire on July 23, 2007, along with her two daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11. Her husband, Dr. William Petit Jr., survived the attack despite being bound and severely beaten in the home invasion. (JOHN WOIKE / HARTFORD COURANT)

State's Attorney Michael Dearington has withdrawn an unusual motion to have the two men accused of the Cheshire triple murders tried together but with separate juries.

Dearington would not comment Friday on why he withdrew it. He had filed the motion earlier this month, seeking a joint trial with dual juries for Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, for the purpose of "sparing the remaining victim, family members, and witnesses the ordeal of multiple trials, and for the purpose of judicial economy."

Superior Court Judge Roland D. Fasano held a hearing earlier this month on Dearington's request but had not made a ruling yet. The two men, both facing the death penalty for the brutal murders of Jennifer Petit and her two daughters Michaela, 11, and Hayley, 17, in July 2007. Both men are due back in New Haven Superior Court on October 1.

Hayes is expected to go to trial first, possibly as early as February 2010.

Sources familiar with the case said Fasano was in the process of reviewing with Judicial officials the feasibility of having two juries in one courtroom at the same time and whether there was even a courtroom in the state that could be retrofitted to handle such a trial.

Sources said court officials have told Fasano that having one trial with separate juries would be a logistics nightmare, as well as costly for the state.

Court officials have estimated it would cost more than $1 million to renovate a courtroom and provide enough security to have a joint trial with separate juries — which would have to be sequestered and monitored 24 hours a day to make sure jurors on separate juries didn't talk to each other.

Defense attorneys for both Hayes and Komisarjevsky objected to Dearington's request in part because they may have antagonistic defenses — each suspect blames the other. Komisarjevsky's attorney, Jeremiah Donovan, filed a portion of Komisarjevsky's more than 70-page confession to police as part of his motion against the dual juries, but Fasano kept it sealed, as he has portions of the arrest warrant that include details of that confession.

Sources familiar with the case have told The Courant that Komisarjevsky, for the most part, blames the murders on Hayes. Sources said he told police that he was upstairs when he heard a noise downstairs and saw Hayes sexually assaulting and then strangling Jennifer Petit in the living room of the family's Cheshire home.

Sources said Komisarjevsky then told police that Hayes said there could be "no witnesses." He said Hayes then got some cans of gasoline and spread it on Jennifer Petit's body and then up the stairs into the bedrooms where the two girls were tied to their beds.

They then lit the gasoline and ran out of the burning home and tried to escape using an SUV belonging to the Petits. Cheshire police had set up a roadblock, and the two men crashed the car and were arrested on the spot. Hayes was wearing Hayley's Miss Porter's Crew hat when he was captured.

The two girls both died of smoke inhalation. Hayley Petit managed to escape from her bed but was unable to make it to the bathroom on the second floor.

Hayes, 46, of Winsted, and Komisarjevsky, 29, of Cheshire, are charged with capital felony and murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and arson in the killings.